Dollmaker
by bluethursday
Summary: Tim is a dollmaker. Damian is his Doll


Summary: Tim is a dollmaker. Damian is his Doll

Disclaimer: I own nothing

...

The dollmaker, the creator, the first and the only placed his fingertips on the full lower lip. Break him apart, put him back together, stitch every piece of skin every morsel creating the favorite son all over again. The perfect soldier.

Gentle is the press of his hand, the puff of his breath as his heart pulses under his chest.

One. Two. Three. Four

Gentle is the heart that brings to life the soldier. Dollmaker, undertaker. The ones who defile the bodies of the dead. No blacker magic than this, nothing darker or more pervasive than the slick push of bone and cartilage. The recreation.

Olive skin, an indefinable heritage, the arm is missing and it took so long to find a new one. One just as good, just as supple as the old. There is no use for broken limbs and as good as he is Tim couldn't reconstruct the pulpy flesh of Damian's arm.

Damian was the name given to him, the name chosen, and Tim had watched him fall. Third Robin, third son. Third child. What is left for the third but the scrapings of the bowl. What is left for the child born of the blasphemous marriage betwixt the dark and the madness that resides within in it. There is no love left, not for the third born, not for the one who was crushed, arm too mangled, body broken

It took a long time to retrieve him, buried under the ruins as he was. Another skyscraper fallen in the city of Gotham, another body buried at the bottom.

What place was there for those who's burial was denied, pressed under ashes and cement, under the framework of the giant that once stood out against the morning light.

Tim hated taking humans and remaking them. They were tedious, finicky and with their soft flesh they were far too prone to breaking apart, breaking down in the process of their awakening. But. But Damian was hurting, far too much, so much that the very air went out from Tims lungs as he felt him die. Felt that one little light in the big bad world go dark.

Something in him was far too similar to the boy Tim had been, curled on his mother's knee learning the craft so shunned by all others who practiced in the occult, the old religion.

_Dollmakers are the most hated, the most reviled of all practitioners, not because we raise the dead but because we can raise them fully intact and we choose not to, because we take their bodies and use them as soldiers, as weapons, as puppets. We can wake them up or we can use them as we see fit. Do you understand Tim? Why we are hated?Why you are hated._

Flesh repaired under gentle hands, stitched back together. There is the new arm, better than the old. There is the laceration on the right side of the body, close to the hip. There are the intestines, cleaned, washed and placed back inside the body, sealed in so no scar will show.

The eyes were always the hardest part. They were the part that remembered, they were the part that lost. No dollmaker took bodies without eyes, unless they were making simple minions. Without the eyes, they were useless.

One cobalt blue eye, dark as the storm at full tempest, was missing. Crushed in the collapse.

He would not be a minion or a soldier. No, Tim would not allow it. He would rip his own eye first and place it in the empty gaping socket before allowing that to occur. Try as he had, he had combed the streets after his own collection had proved to be useless and he had not found a match.

One old man in a corner store in west Gotham had eyes close to that particular shade of blue, except his were blue satin, touched with a soft mossy glow but weak. Decrepit old eyes that would be blind a few years to come.

He had tried to make Damian from the same material as he was, as close of a match as he could. As close as he could find.

_Always make like from like. When recreating a human take from human flesh. The body rejects that which is foreign to it._

Always make like from like. It had been taught to him as long as he could remember. There were exceptions of course. Halfling creatures. When the ordinary measures failed, the extraordinary had to be taken.

If Damian rejected the implant, Tim would start again. Take what had been ruined and make it whole. Dragon eyes too large, and the violent green ones of the hydra too poisonous. He would give him the eye of a gorgon. Medusa's eye. That which had turned all it looked at to stone. It was always such a lovely shade of blue, like aquamarine lighting.

Perfect against the tan of his face, the dark of his hair. Simply perfect.

Pressing a hand to his chest Tim breathed in. Today was the day his soldier would wake.

_As free as you make them, as whole as you raise them, everything you touch will rake themselves over coals at your whim. You leave a mark, on the inside where no one can touch it. In the skin they wear, in the blood that pumps through their veins, you leave a mark, a trace of yourself and they live with the want of more from the moment they rise. They live for their creator. As free as you make them. They are chained to your side._

Today he would rise.

Mismatched eyes snapped open staring at the face above.

"What do you remember?" The face asked. Commanded. Invoked.

He could do nothing but answer, the words pulled straight from his lips. "Everything." Everything but you, beautiful and perfect. Damian had read of angels, but the belief in myth had not prepared him for the reality.

Is this what it feels like, he thought, is this what it feels like when you die. Soft and indescribable. Is this what happens?

The figure was sad. "I know I've brought you back, and I know that you would forgive me, that you would love me regardless but I'm sorry. You would do anything for me. I'm sorry."

That was all Damian would ever be able to do, Tim thought. All he would know from now on. Dollmakers loved their dolls, poured everything they had into them with the inescapable knowledge that their creations loved them because they were made to love them. Loved them because they knew no other way.

Damian was a indulgence, a selfish wish. He never took humans, never remade them. They were too volatile, to wretched and easily broken and when they broke he would put them back together again, but it hurt. It tore at him to stitch limbs and mend tears as though he was simply patching up a beloved shirt or toy.

Damian curled his face into Tim's side, hand locked in his shirt, nuzzling the flesh in front of him. His child, his son. His love. His first born with gorgon eyes. With a drop of Tim's blood in his veins, a single drop.

"What do I call you?" Damian whispered, stroking the fabric of Tim's shirt between his fingers.

"Papa" Tim answered. The Bat was father, he would be Papa.

Human dolls were so fragile, so very easily broken. He would take care to keep Damian whole. He would take care to give his first born what he needed. His firstborn child. Tim smiled at the thought. His firstborn. Kissing the top of Damian's head Tim murmured, "Welcome home eldest, welcome home."

…

**Damian adjusted with ease. He understood that he could go back. Be the Bat's son, but he would not, could not leave Papa. The last part had never been said, the last part had been Damian's addition. Papa would be lonely, all by himself painting new faces, making new limbs.**

Papa had made him and allowed him to go to the home from before, live his life and with no conditions. He did not ask Damian spy on the Bat or commit some act of treason, he simply offered Damian the choice to go home. For him to return from were he came, but his Papa, his beautiful perfect Papa was unaware that by his side was the place Damian belonged. The first place he had ever truly belonged.

…..

When Dick fell it was breaking and flying all at once. The sudden pain mixed with weightless disbelief. The hurt warred with the words that sat on the tip of his tongue, held there by some nameless force. Held there by years under the Demon's Head and years more under the Bat, but Damian loved him. His elder brother, his father, his caretaker from before. The one who stood beside him.

The one who had loved him. Did love him.

As they watched him fall Damian clinging to Tim, motionless in his lap, he asked for the first time, the only time since his rebirth for something, anything from the dollmaker. "Can you fix him." He uttered. Steady and sure.

Tim inhaled and took one look at the body in front of him. Back broken in 3 places but the all the limbs intact. "Yes." Yes I can fix him, yes I will fix him, yes for the first time in a long time you can have one of your brothers back and you can keep him.

Damian watched him work. Watched him piece together the first Robin, setting his limbs and making him stronger, better than before.

One more grave in the graveyard. One more bodiless coffin. One more bat dead.

….

When Jason came it was tricky. Twice dead is a hard thing to work with. The soul has left twice, the damage done on the inside, immense. Such was the hurt, to the extent that Tim had concerns about his ability to put the second Robin back together again. To the extent that Tim worried about the lack of usable material. Twice dead was a hard thing to bring back.

In the end he patched the places he could with vampire veins and fairy blood. One, twice dead, the other in a strange in between, dying and living at any moment.

When Jason woke he woke screaming, clawing at the air above him. Clawing at the coffin he had once crawled from. Clawing at nothing but air. He gasps and ached and screaming, wailing into the night. One his third life much life his first and second Jason came into the world crying savagely.

The midwives at the hospital he had been birthed in, had never heard an child cry like Jason Peter Todd.

Tim stood there and held him. Tim held him and allowed Jason to claw streaks into his back taking the pain and the anger that came with it. When Jason calmed, when he finally looked at Tim he looked at him with the fear of someone who was terrified that they would be thrown away. Cast off with the refuse never to be seen or used again.

Dick stood with Damian, silent as they watched. They allowed this moment, this cleansing, this baptism of blood and tears, because they knew that what it felt like to wake up for the first time. Both privately wondered if the light hurt Jason's eyes after spending so much time in the dark.

One more grave in the graveyard. One more Bat dead.

…

Bruce came last, fell last. Lost in the dark all three Robin's watched and asked, so Tim took the body, leaving nothing for the house of El or Donna Troy to recover. Leaving nothing, and allowing them the believe Bruce had never died.

So much had to remade. So many scars, so many complications. In the end Tim may as well have placed a new body on an old head for all that he replaced. For all that he restored. When Bruce woke, he was silent in this life as he was in the last, some part of him finally restored from the loss that had crippled him so long ago. Stitched together with thread made of dragon bones and darkness, Bruce rose, for the first time in a long time, happy.

The last Bat dead. One more grave dug. One more coffin nailed.

One more doll made.

…

His body is as it has never been before, every limb moving with a smooth ease that he has not experienced since his younger days. Since before his training broke his bones and unsettled his flesh.

Bruce has lived in a body that has gone through more pain, more suffering and more agony than most ever face. A body that lived through a broken back, recuperating and moving on. Straining itself to compensate for the damage it could fix.

His new form is brand new. Fresh from its packaging, no scuff marks or wear and tear, it is as though nothing has ever happened. There is no proof of life.

He feels himself move and he wonders what he is made of. What his body truly is when broken down to its finest particles.

He can feel no difference from who he once was, no change in his mind, no external control and that brings him some modicum of reassurance.

He will not be a weapon. His mind is his own, even if his body is not.

Only. Even his mind is not his own.

There is a part of him that watches Tim and sees something other than what Bruce Wayne, what Batman sees.

The Detective watches a small boy. A child really, who loves Bruce and Dick, and Jason and Damian but does not seem to know how.

He can tell that Tim's experience with people is so very limited. He knows that in a mask Tim could be anyone but as his own person he confuses actions, common, ordinary things that anyone who spent any amount of time around other people would know.

Tim does not know how close to stand to another person. He is always too far. Always a few steps back from where he should have comfortably been.

He could rearrange an entire nervous system in a matter of hours, but stiffened when held, looking at the one who initiated contact as though they were doing something very odd. Something that had never before been seen.

His words had odd pauses and stops. He would not react the way someone raised in a permeable society would know how to react if only to redirect attention from himself. He did not turn away or avert his eyes at the proper moments, staring the other person down instead.

He did not laugh but for a small sigh, did not cry but for a tug of his lips, nor smile but for a quirk of them.

Bruce has the feeling that who he once was would have hated Tim for what he had done. Created contingency plans and paranoid theories to combat who the dollmaker was.

The detective knows Tim was raised in isolation, skilled in his craft, lonely beyond measure and in a clinical matter, beautiful.

The parts of Bruce tied up in Tim, the aching, retching parts that had been placed back inside of Bruce, returned and restored feel differently. Feel more.

The places where he melted into his maker, the strings he could not cut saw in Tim, a god. A creature of sapphire and ebony who loved Bruce so much it physically hurt him to consider it.

Who called to Bruce, from the place he raised him from, tugging at the heart that still beat because he commanded it do so.

Who did not mind the blackened parts of him, but instead took them inside of himself. Carried them with him and lived like a mouse in the walls of the manor too terrified to make a sound.

Who was so sad for what he had done.

Who walked around knowing that Bruce had no choice but to forgive him.

The detective knows that if he could see himself, in this new body, with this new heart that beat for for one reason. He would lay down his grudge, if only for the sad look in the eyes of a boy who didn't really know a thing about other people.

…

_There is a brief moment, a period between the original and the new creation._

This small thing, that lasts only two hours, where Gotham is left unguarded. Bruce was made so quickly, made well but fast.

A new doll born in the time of a hundred little beats of the heart.

When they slipped him back, like thieves who had taken a priceless treasure and admired it in the cool night air only to return it a few hours later, no one ever knew that he was gone at all.

It was like he had never left.

When the boys, the birds return, one by one no asks.

Too many have risen from the dead.

Clark, disbelieving at his luck, at Bruce's luck, wondering what the bat had done, what sacrifice he made to bring his children back inspected them. As far as he could see, as long as he looked, they were the same.

His eyes were blind to the shadows that patched Bruce.

Jason's new blood, and Damian's new sight. He can not see the places where they are different and the same all at once, changed only so far, only so much. Just enough to keep them breathing, just enough to give them an advantage.

Blunt teeth, and furless flesh, soft as the underbelly of a crocodile, the most vulnerable part coating everything did no one any good.

What place was there for the belly of the beast. The species with the least amount of protection.

No. Clark did not see the changes, not with his eyes.

What useless claws you have, what useless legs and arms. Pink and patchy.

Tim had taken things away, only to replace them with more durable material. Things that no one would notice. Just a little bit, just a little extra went a long, long way.

What did it matter if the birds and bats and flightless creatures that protected Gotham broke so much less than before?

Now they were strong enough.

Bring the crowbar now.

No more would it break the bones Tim set. No more.

And what was so wrong with that? Another layer of protection for the walking underbellies of human mortality. What good are your guns when faced with the a mad bear, an angry beast. What good are your shields and sticks when all that is left is something so very breakable.

And Timothy, don't you dare play with human flesh. It breaks so easily, and its so hard to work with. You want something that will last, something far less finicky.

Bring down _gods_ child. That is the legacy you have been left with.

Tear them from their thunderclouds, their oceans and life, break them and bend them to your will, but stay away from human flesh.

You are better than that. I have raised you to be better.

Honor your heritage. Be proud.

_There is nothing wrong with being a beast when you have the skin of beauty._


End file.
